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Tuesday, 28 May 2013

Family Fun: A Damp Day in Keswick

WIth torrential rain forecast and four under 10s to entertain we arranged to drive up to Keswick this morning. It's about an hour from Kendal (subject to traffic!) but it has a lot of indoor venues for families.First up was a return visit to the Puzzling Place after our last successful visit in 2011. It had all 3 generations really intrigued and there was something for all of us to test out and puzzle over. These included a room where nothing was vertical:

She is standing straight!

An interactive rock pool:

A gallery of holograms:

And the room where your size perception completely fails:

We eventually dragged everyone back out to eat a picnic - luckily it was barely drizzling. Then it was off to the new museum that had enticed us to visit Keswick. This is the Keswick Dinosaur and Raptor Experience which had only been open since Saturday! Its on the site of the old mining museum and combines both dinosaurs and their living descendants raptors. We were greeted at the top of the steps by one of these live birds:

And then in the reception area you meet a model of a genuine T rex skull, its amazing how big it is:

We managed to go the wrong way round the museum (somehow none of us noticed the dinosaur footprints showing us the right way round...). So the first room we went into was a chance for the children to get hands on as paleontologists:

Further on was a room with dinosaur related colouring and puzzles:

Then there were displays of fossils and replica dinosaurs with plenty of information to digest. Only 1 child was persuaded to do the simple quiz which encouraged them to take notice of the exhibition properly. The others were more interested in getting up close to the models:

We were very lucky as Colin the owner had time to talk to us and let a couple of the children handle Oscar the Screech owl:

If you have a couple of hours to spare the museum is a good place to spend time as family and at £14 for a family of 4 its not going to break the bank. We will be back!Afterwards we braved the slightly heavier drizzle and headed for the shores of Derwentwater. There is always an attraction to water for children and the views weren't too covered in cloud to spoil it for the adults:

The children found a canine friend to throw sticks into the lake for:

Once they knew you could buy bird food they were happy to move on and look out for goslings etc:

Eventually the children got too cold and damp so we headed back to the cars via Hope Park:

All in all a great day despite the weather and I thoroughly recommend Keswick as a rainy day family destination!